As the title says, I'm a little peeved about it all. I work as a school bus driver which is normally pretty chill. I am using the job as a means to get through University which is close by. They have admittedly been generous about bending to my school schedule, as I established right from the beginning that school is priority for me.
Since the beginning of the year though, they have switched me to a new route about 6 times now, taken about 4 buses from me and tossed me into the old beater they've had laying around because of their poor internal maintenance and scheduling ability. As they put it “they ran out of buses, so need me to drive this one for the rest of the year”. Also, where I live is pretty rural, and so when hunting season comes around the old timers take off and leave the rest of the workers to pick up their routes, and usually it's done by sending the drivers a text the day before saying that they're short staffed and need help.
For me, it's finals week at University and my schedule is slammed. I have 5 exams coming up in the next week and most of my spare time is occupied by studying, including before my bus run. So today I got an email from someone at work saying they needed me to jump on a run I've never done tomorrow before my usual run (which btw would not pay any more due to the 4 hours minimum). I told them no, I was busy, and they proceeded to try and guilt trip me into doing it anyways even after I repeatedly told them no. Finally they seemed to get the message, but not before passive aggressively name dropping our department head saying they'd have to let them know and “good luck with my very busy day”.
I should also mention that this is far from the first time I've “done them a big favour”, though I hardly see how this racking up of favours has benefited me. I don't get paid any more for doing extra, I don't get PTO (and have not once called in sick as a result), no employee benefits, and barely a living wage to begin with as it is fundamentally a part-time job.
Like, I get it, sometimes companies are short staffed. But I gave my reasoning and they knew where my priorities were right from the beginning. Also, why didn't they account for a sudden and expected loss of personnel during the hunting season. Why is it my problem now that a bunch of folks have decided to take time off? Now I'm left feeling somewhat guilty and I don't know if they'll do something passive aggressive as a result in retaliation in the future… Fuck, I wish I could afford to just go to school full-time and not deal with this. Sorry for the post length, I guess I needed to vent a bit.
Edit: spelling & grammar